CULTURE

The Jimmy Savile Sex-Abuse Scandal Is Even More Repulsively Perverted than We Originally Thought

In a Vanity Fair feature published last year, A. A. Gillwrote extensively about Jimmy Savile, the eccentric BBC personality who died in 2011 and has since been identified as one of the most prolific perverts and predatory criminals in recent memory. Gill reported that, after Savile’s death, “as many as 500 middle-aged women” came forward to allege they had been molested by the media personality. Making the abhorrent crimes even more deplorable is the fact that many of his victims were, according to the same feature, “children in hospitals and terminal wards [and] the abjectly distressed in mental hospitals.”

Thanks to a series of independent investigations that concluded today, we now have even more nightmarish details about Savile’s reign of terror inside the hospitals he frequently visited under the guise of charity. Among the most disturbing findings:

Savile molested victims over a nearly 50-year span, from 1962 to 2009. (The New York Times)

At one of the roughly 30 hospitals investigated—Leeds General Infirmary—Savile was found to have abused 60 people, male and female, patients and staff members, ranging from the age of five to 75 years old. (The Telegraph)

Because of his charitable contributions, Savile had free access to many areas of the hospitals, even the mortuaries, where Savile is believed to [have] sexually assaulted corpses. Per The Guardian, “One former Broadmoor nurse told investigators that Savile claimed to have performed sex acts on bodies and ‘mucked about’ in the mortuary, posing in photographs with the deceased after placing them in lewd positions.” (The Guardian)

“Separately, the independent investigation was told that Savile had removed glass eyes from the bodies and used them as jewellery.” (The Guardian)

“Savile was said to have been best friends with the chief mortician of Leeds General Infirmary, who is now dead, and had regular unsupervised access to the mortuary from the late 70s until the mid-90s.” (The Guardian)

“The investigation panel found that incidents ranged from lewd remarks and inappropriate touching to sexual assault and, in three cases, rape.” (The Telegraph)

“Research by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that he abused at least 500 victims, the youngest of them was two years old.” (The New York Times)

“Savile had a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville [Hospital], where his now-defunct charitable trust was based, as well as an office and living quarters at Broadmoor [psychiatric hospital].” (BBC)

“A former patient [at London’s Barnet General Hospital] said that nurses in 1983 told her Savile ‘liked to have sex with dead bodies.’ [. . .] She described having a conversation with the nurses in which they allegedly said they spied on JS when they worked at another hospital and observed him having sex with a dead body.” (The Guardian)

“Investigators said while there was no way of proving Savile interfered with the bodies in this way, they concluded that "it is evident his interest in the mortuary was not within accepted boundaries.” (The Telegraph)

In light of these conclusions, the AP reports that “Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologized on behalf of the government, saying the country shared a ‘deep sense of revulsion.’ He said he is writing to health officials to ask them to verify patient safety in light of the findings.” (AP)